The representative artist, Osang Gwon will open the duo exhibition with Tetsuya Nakamura at BSSM.
Does sculpture have speed? As the term ‘statue’ originated from the Latin ‘static,’ sculpture is traditionally thought of as a stationary object with zero speed. Sculpture as mass with a sense of volume and weight has in history appeared to move as an illusion, or has defied a sense of weight through its linear form. Or, it has actually moved, like kinetic sculpture, departing from zero speed. Sculpture’s ‘stationary’ objecthood has turned into changing, moving materiality, expanding to a larger category encompassing space.
However, what we call ‘sculpture’ freestanding and stationary in space is still effective: it is alright to say this is the most optical definition of ‘sculptural sculpture’. In this exhibition on sculpture, ironically, Osang Gwon and Tetsuya Nakamura display the fastest things that can be depicted in sculpture with zero speed. Lamborghini cars and Ducati motorcycles Osang Gwon has reproduced are things that pass by us fast in modern daily life, and Tetsuya Nakamura’s streamlined sculpture redolent of racing cars or jet planes is likely to move at the velocity of sound. Their stationary sculptures seem to run at the maximum speed.
The strong sensation of speed felt in static sculpture is not merely derived from a representation of quick objects. Nakamura’s sculpture over five meters long appears agile rather than massive because of its streamlined shape and above all the sleek metallic surface wrapping it: the lustrous surface makes the sculpture as mass shatter into light with straightforward impetus. This sensation of speed lent by the movement of reflected light is for the artist both form and content, denoting contemporary society exuberating and intensely appearing yet nonchalantly disappearing at speed. His sculpture completely capturing viewer attention with its surface without a scratch or trace, like a surface polished by machine resembles a way of modern life through which contemporary people rush toward superficial desire, with content that arouses and vanishes from the surface.
In contrast, Gwon’s sculpture demonstrates surface with the trace of the hand rather than of the machine. While Nakamura sticks to a mechanical aesthetic sense despite the use of his hand in polishing the surface, Gwon leaves the trace of his hand adding and polishing in a traditional manner, with the texture of clay adhered and cracked. Gwon’s sculpture such as a Lamborghini car made in a feel of ‘large as flat mass’, intending to engender an intrinsic sculptural sense of volume, and Ducati motorcycle made like a ‘torso’ through modeling are not however interestingly felt with any sense of heavy weight. This is associated with the fact that he has actually made light or seemingly light sculpture with photographs.
Gwon represents objects by gluing pieces of photographic papers on a styrofoam mass after taking photographs like he was scanning the surfaces of real objects. The photographic pieces, all slightly dislocated, lessen a sense of weight, shattering sculpture’s sense of mass into pieces of imagery. In The Flat series, he challenges the relation between a flat surface and a sculptural mass more aggressively. He makes the flat image stand from a shiny magazine surface exploring the sculptural sense of space and volume. That is, the surface brings forth a sculptural mass. In the subsequent The Sculpture series, the surface again deconstructs the mass...
...It is not so awkward to comment on speed as a qualification for sculpture since sculpture exists in the visuality of the times. Osang Gwon and Tetsuya Nakamura reply to a question about sculpture in contemporary society, lending speed of the image to sculpture that cannot have speed itself. Everything today is swiftly fleeting and slipping away before being caught by hand: the true nature of speed is exposed in space through these two sculptors.
- Text by BSSM
